From ETFs to Treasuries: How The U.S. Is Shaping Digital Finance

This submit is an excerpt from our 2025 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report. Reserve your copy now!

Riding the waves: Why North America swings more durable

With the United States coming in at quantity two within the Chainalysis 2025 Adoption Index, North America is broadly thought-about to be a significant chief for crypto adoption, accounting for 26% of all transaction exercise within the interval studied. The area obtained a complete of $2.3 trillion in cryptocurrency transaction worth between July 2024 and June 2025, reaching a peak in December 2024, when an estimated $244 billion was obtained in a single month. The spike in North America’s worth obtained on the finish of 2024 additionally featured unprecedented stablecoin exercise, with December 2024 seeing the very best recorded variety of month-to-month stablecoin transfers.

A key driver of those flows was doubtless the election of President Trump in November 2024, which drove bullish market sentiments amid expectations for larger regulatory readability and a extra crypto-friendly coverage stance. Monetary easing in This autumn 2024 doubtless additionally contributed to driving danger urge for food, alongside institutional buying and selling exercise, together with ETF-driven flows and portfolio rebalancing. While flows tapered in 2025, they remained elevated in contrast to the earlier 12 months, indicating sustained curiosity in digital asset markets.

North America reveals extra volatility in crypto transaction worth than the remainder of the world, doubtless due to its heavier focus of institutional exercise and energetic buying and selling methods. Between September 2024 and June 2025, North America’s month-to-month transaction progress charges swung extra considerably than these in the remainder of the world, from a steep 35% month-on-month decline in September to an 84% spike in November.

These bigger swings counsel that North American markets are extra delicate to short-term catalysts, similar to shifts in market sentiment or macroeconomic indicators. At the identical time, the remainder of the world reveals extra secure patterns of adoption and use. This divergence suggests differing market constructions: institutional and investment-driven in North America, versus probably extra utility- and remittance-driven exercise in different areas.

While institutional participation in North America has developed considerably during the last 12 months, and bitcoin ETFs are gaining momentum, as we analyze within the following part, retail exercise on centralized exchanges stays sturdy. When we concentrate on centralized trade exercise, the information reveal that between June 2024 and July 2025, on a regular basis customers bought $2.7 trillion price of bitcoin utilizing USD, adopted by $1.5 trillion in ETH and $454 billion in USDT. The share of bitcoin in all fiat buying and selling has remained extremely secure over the previous 4 years, capturing round 42% of all fiat buying and selling in December 2022 and 42% of all fiat buying and selling once more in June 2025.

North America: The institutional powerhouse of crypto

The 12 months 2025 has ushered in a extra favorable U.S. regulatory surroundings for establishments in search of publicity to cryptoassets. Regulators such because the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have withdrawn past guidance that created operational obstacles for monetary establishments to undertake crypto-related actions, changing restrictions with clearer frameworks that allow broader institutional engagement with digital belongings. More just lately, the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets issued a set of recommendations aimed toward making the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world,” additional strengthening coverage momentum on this entrance.

The U.S. SEC has dropped plenty of investigations and enforcement actions in a shift away from what was extensively perceived as a “regulation by enforcement” technique. Meanwhile, different regulators within the U.S. have revoked hawkish steerage and opened the door to larger participation by conventional monetary establishments in crypto markets.

While the complete impact of those regulatory shifts will solely grow to be obvious on-chain over time, North America already leads the world in high-value crypto exercise, with 45% of all transaction worth occurring in transfers over $10 million. Europe follows at a distant second, with 34% of worth switch going down by way of these large-scale transfers, underscoring North America’s outsized position in institutional crypto adoption.

Explosion of tokenized treasuries and the bitcoin ETF market

The rising integration of conventional finance and cryptocurrency markets is clear within the United States. Over the previous 12 months, two explicit segments have proven sturdy progress: tokenized cash market funds, and bitcoin and different spot crypto ETFs.

Within the marketplace for tokenized real-world belongings, U.S. treasuries have been a vivid spot. Tokenized shares of cash market funds that maintain U.S. treasuries have grown quickly. Assets beneath administration (AUM) of those tokenized funds almost quadrupled over 12 months, from roughly $2 billion in August 2024 to greater than $7 billion in August 2025. While nonetheless small relative to the general U.S. authorities debt market, the sturdy progress on this sector displays investor demand for regulated, on-chain, liquid, but yield-bearing belongings. In a high-interest-rate surroundings, they’ve grow to be particularly engaging to crypto-native buyers and establishments in search of secure returns on-chain, and they’re more and more used as collateral in DeFi protocols or by fintechs providing yield-bearing merchandise.

The bitcoin ETF market continues to appeal to noteworthy institutional exercise. As of mid-July 2025, the worldwide AUM for bitcoin ETFs has surged to roughly $179.5 billion, with U.S.-listed bitcoin ETFs main the best way and driving nearly all of this progress. Some earlier experiences cited $120 billion in U.S. bitcoin ETF AUM, highlighting their speedy enlargement since approval in early 2024.

The progress of bitcoin ETF AUM has necessary implications for U.S. markets. With greater than $120 billion of the roughly $180 billion in world AUM tied to U.S.-listed merchandise, American buyers can get worth publicity to Bitcoin while not having a crypto pockets or immediately holding the underlying asset. And whereas the ethereum ETF market has but to take off in the identical method, it has additionally attracted vital and rising funding for the reason that first funds had been launched, with AUM sitting at $24 billion.

The rising funding in these automobiles and potential approval for Solana ETFs within the US counsel not solely is there an urge for food, however maybe extra essentially, that cryptoassets are more and more rising as investible asset courses. At the identical time, this enlargement strengthens the U.S.’s position in world digital asset investments. ETF-driven flows hyperlink bitcoin demand extra carefully to U.S. financial coverage and market cycles, reinforcing correlations with different danger belongings. While this will amplify volatility, it ensures that the U.S. stays the important thing hub for institutional bitcoin publicity, embedding crypto extra deeply into its monetary system and lengthening U.S. affect over world adoption.

The U.S. greenback goes borderless

The outsized position of the U.S. greenback in world commerce and finance is mirrored available in the market composition of stablecoins, which now facilitate the motion of trillions of {dollars} worldwide every month. In 2025, switch volumes steadily exceeded $2 trillion per thirty days, with peaks approaching $3 trillion. Today, with a complete adjusted transaction worth of almost $16 trillion between January and July 2025, volumes have almost tripled from the identical interval final 12 months.

These volumes underscore how dollar-referenced digital belongings have grow to be built-in into world finance. Within cryptoasset buying and selling markets, stablecoins present an important settlement asset. Outside of crypto buying and selling markets, stablecoins present an alternate set of rails for populations usually underserved by conventional banking, providing entry to environment friendly transfers and secure financial savings in a method that reinforces U.S. financial affect properly past home borders.

Under the brand new administration, coverage momentum on stablecoins has been swift. In July 2025, President Trump signed into regulation the GENIUS Act, which establishes a two-tier regulatory method to stablecoins. Stablecoins with a market capitalization of over $10 billion fall beneath federal-level oversight, whereas these with lower than $10 billion have the choice to go for state-level oversight. Besides defending customers by way of strict guidelines on reserve backing, disclosures, and advertising, the GENIUS Act is explicitly geared towards sustaining the U.S. greenback’s dominance as a world reserve forex. The rationale appears sound; the sustained scale of stablecoin flows demonstrates their significance in shaping the monetary markets of the long run.

So, what does this imply for U.S. crypto adoption?

Recent regulatory modifications have opened the door, enabling each monetary establishments and retail buyers to take part extra actively in crypto markets. Such sturdy demand from each Wall Street and Main Street helps make sure the United States cements its place as a world hub for cryptocurrency funding and innovation. Meanwhile, the worldwide adoption of dollar-backed stablecoins is extending American financial affect past conventional borders, reflecting and entrenching the outsized position of the U.S. greenback in world markets.

With no indicators that regulatory momentum will gradual any time quickly and institutional demand persevering with to rise, the U.S. seems well-positioned to stay close to the highest of the charts and probably declare the highest spot in world crypto adoption as we glance to subsequent 12 months.

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